Free Outrage by Arnaldur Indridason Page B

not managed to finish dressing before he was killed. It was possible that his companion had attacked him, but an alternative had also to be considered: that another person had committed the crime. Elinborg tended to favour that view, although she had no particular arguments to support her hunch. The murder weapon, a razor-sharp knife, might have belonged to the victim. Four kitchen knives were arranged on a magnetic strip on the wall. Perhaps there had originally been a set of five. The killer could have used the fifth, then taken it away when he or she left. It was not clear from the knives whether one was missing, and an exhaustive search of Thingholt and further afield had so far yielded no result.
    And then there was the Rohypnol in Runolfur’s mouth and throat. He could hardly have taken it of his own accord.
    ‘Did you find a lot of Rohypnol in the body?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes - a good deal, really, which seems to have been forced down him.’
    ‘But it hadn’t reached the bloodstream?’
    ‘We don’t know yet,’ replied the pathologist. ‘Tox screening takes longer.’
    Elinborg looked at him. ‘Oh, yes, of course.’
    ‘It would have taken about ten minutes to start working, and after that he wouldn’t have been capable of defending himself in any way.’
    ‘That’s consistent with the fact that we found little sign of a struggle.’
    ‘Absolutely. He wouldn’t have been able to put up any resistance, however much he wanted to.’
    ‘Just like his presumed victim.’
    ‘He got a taste of his own medicine, if that’s what you mean.’
    ‘So someone forced him to swallow the stuff, then coolly slit his throat?’
    The pathologist shrugged. ‘That’s your department.’
    Elinborg looked down at the body. ‘He looks pretty fit. Maybe he met women at a gym,’ she said.
    ‘That’s possible, if he worked out.’
    ‘And he went to people’s homes and offices. He was a telecoms engineer.’
    ‘He got around, then.’
    ‘And there are all the clubs and bars.’
    ‘Don’t you think it’s more likely that he picked women up at random, rather than targeting them specifically?’
    The police officers had discussed this factor at length. Some felt that Runolfur’s modus operandi was fairly straightforward: he met a woman at a bar and invited her home. Some liked the look of him and went with him. It remained unclear whether he drugged any of them since there were no witnesses. Other officers reckoned that he had definitely used drugs and worked in a systematic manner. He did not trust to luck in picking up a woman. He had some acquaintanceship with them, though perhaps only very slight.
    ‘Maybe,’ said Elinborg. ‘Anyway, we have to find out how he met women. We haven’t dismissed the possibility that a woman was with him when he was killed, and that she may be the killer.’
    ‘The cut looks like that, at any rate,’ said the pathologist. ‘That was my first reaction when I saw it. My mind went to an old-fashioned straight razor, the kind where the blade folds into the handle. Do you know what I mean?’
    ‘What did you say about the cut?’
    The pathologist looked down at the body. ‘It’s smooth,’ he said. ‘When I saw it I thought to myself that it was … almost feminine.’

9
    It was dark in the bar. A large window that faced on to the street had been broken and was now boarded up with plywood. The repair looked recent. Elinborg thought it was probably a temporary measure, but perhaps not. The pane of glass in the door had also been broken, but longer ago. It was covered with black-painted plywood that was scratched and graffitied. It did not look as if the proprietor intended to install new glass. Given up trying, thought Elinborg to herself.
    The owner was crouched behind the bar. She was about to ask him about the window but then she lost interest. No doubt there had been a fight. Maybe someone had thrown a table through it. She did not want to know.
    ‘Has Berti been in